Boys, two Men
by Sandshrew777
Summary: A story which asks the question, "What is a man?" and answers with two men who never thought they had a choice to be more than their boyhood selves: Draco Malfoy and Neville Longbottom. Character sketch.


**Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter. If I did, we'd see more Seamus.**

**Author's Note: I love to understate. Hope you enjoy, and please review.**

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What is a man?

_Neville shakily took the book from Professor's Sprout's outstretched hands, held onto it for just a moment until his hands shook too much and the book fumbled onto her twister of a desk._

How should he behave? Is he defined by some accords society has set forth arbitrarily, some gender roles based not on his sex but on masculinity, which women can and often do possess? Should he conform to these, abide by the rules until the parts of him he doesn't exercise wither like a dried up flan?

_Draco glared at Harry from far, far across the library, glared even though Harry had been deeply occupied with his Charms essay and textbooks for the past thirty-seven minutes._

How should he look? Should every muscle be defined, clearly visible when any portion of the body is revealed? Should the hair be short or Biblically long - and on what parts of the body is it acceptable to keep hair?

_Draco panted into the cracked mirror of Moaning Myrtle's bathroom, sweat-stunk straw sliding, clinging to his head as he splashed muddy water into his uncleansed eyes._

How should he present himself, furthermore? Should he be tailored, groomed, clean, compact? Or should he be rough, unkempt, rugged, on the verge of dirty?

_Neville scraped at his fingernails, picking hurriedly because Ginny was coming down the stairs any second now and she was going to notice everything that was wrong, girls always did; and of course he'd forgotten the eight or nine charms that could have done the job for him in under a second._

Should he exude a certain air: of centuries of sagacious study; of imperturable unapproachability; of joyous raucousity; of lustful sentimentality; of venerable charisma; of anything at all?

_Neville giggled as the feather tickled him, not bothering to counter Hermione's charm because it was just so fun to laugh and she knew it too, she was smiling even if her eyes told him she wished he'd fight back just once._

Should he be anything at all?

_Neville's curse swung wide and he didn't have time to see where it went, didn't notice that it deflected a sickly green curse arcing toward the back of Draco Malfoy._

Man has no definition, merely examples, of course. We know this, spout it as truth, yet conveniently ignore it whenever we feel like we need to, generally to prove ourselves somehow superior.

_Draco knew if he could convince him that he really was a Death Eater he could live for another few minutes, which was better than dying now, which was the only alternative; and when the darkness came, came to let him run away again, he found himself wondering if this whole dying thing wasn't so bad after all._

There is no definition for man, save for a reflexive one: man is man. He is himself.

_Neville watched the blond man stride slowly across the grounds, watched the torn Muggle jeans and cream button-down shirt and wondered when the moment was when we all grew up._

_Draco looked out the window in the Headmistress' hallway as he waited for her to return, glanced down his nose to see the small figure of a Longbottom dragging a mass of sticks across the wet July grass; and although he rolled his eyes at Longbottom's habitual ignorance of his magical ability to just float the sticks to wherever he wanted them to be, he did happen to wonder if Longbottom had been forgetting on purpose all along._

_Neville watched the blond man exit as slowly as he came, took notice of the slight frown that must have meant polite refusal of the vacant Potions position, but continued to fertilize Greenhouse Two without incident._

_Draco looked over, on a whim, to see Longbottom knee deep in dung, and being somehow drawn, feeling like he somehow owed it to him for some reason he didn't fully comprehend, Draco walked over._

_Neville watched a shadow fall over his pot. He looked up._

_Draco looked confused. He watched Neville's hands continue to work the fertilizer into the soil._

_Neville looked expectant. _

_Draco watched intently._

_And then Draco turned and slowly walked away._

_"Good day to you too, Malfoy," Neville called after him, laughing a little because it was just so fun to laugh at such an odd situation._

_Draco smiled a smile Neville didn't notice, couldn't have seen, and stuck his clean hands into empty pockets._


End file.
